It can also be profitable when done properly.

We tend to focus on local Pittsburgh advertising sites that are actually “local” because they normally contain less garbage than the sites that have advertising for a bunch of cities around the country. Many of these sites are being ruined by automated spambots and simply can not be monitored closely enough to eliminate most of the junk. They also lack any local promotion by traditional means, i.e., newspapers, television, radio, etc. So they have very little brand recognition and rely solely on organic search results.

The sites that we normally use in our free advertising, for business or personal use, are our own Pittsburgh Classifieds, the Pittsburgh Pennysaver, and craigslist(this is one that isn’t actually “local” but has provided results). If you’ve found a free classified site for Pittsburgh that has worked for you, please feel free to comment and help our users.

With that, here are some advantages and disadvantages of free Pittsburgh classified sites:

Advantages

• Cost – free says it all. When you find a site that works for you, it becomes well worth the few minutes of your time to set up an account and post your ads.
• Convenient – many of these sites make reposting your ad very simple. Our Shop The Burgh site, for example sends out an email a couple days before the ad expires allowing users to renew their ad simply by logging in to their account.
• Targeted – like most worthwhile internet advertising, your ads are generally seen only by those people looking for what you are promoting. You pick the category/subcategory, so you know visitors from that site are actually interested in what you have to offer.

Disadvantages

• Spam/Junk posting – as mentioned earlier, many free classifieds sites are littered with junk and spam from automated posting software. Before taking the time to register and post, review the categories you are interested to see how much garbage the site has. Even if there is a significant amount of spam posts, it may still be worth a few minutes of your time to run a test ad. Then check your stats to see if traffic is being generated. If you are getting traffic, it may be worthwhile to keep posting there.
• Emails from the ad sites: always read the terms of service when posting free ads to see if the ad sites mention whether or not your email address will be marketed to by them or sold to third parties. Most won’t, especially truly local sites that rely solely on local visitors. But just beware and take a few moments to search the net for the site’s name and the term spam.
• Time is not free – while no actual money is spent, our time is money. Track your ad results from these free Pittsburgh classified sites, test a few different subject lines and wording of your ads, then decide if it’s worth continuing to use that site.
• Brief exposure – if the section you are posting in gets a lot of ads, your stay on the front page may be very brief, possibly only a few hours. This can be a double edged sword. High traffic means a lot of potential viewers, but it also means your timing would have to be just right to catch some customers before your ad is pushed off the first page. Again, checking stats and playing around with ad copy, different times of day to post, etc. can
  help determine if it’s worth the effort.